"When The Going Gets Weird, The Weird Turn Pro". - Hunter S. Thompson

Well, it certainly has gotten weird out there. The Hillary Clinton spin machine has been reactivated ... Cats now have a TV show just for them on cable ... There's a dictator in North Korea that looks like a member of The Talking Heads and his hand is on the big red button just itching for a fight. Chicago Cubs homerun powerhouse, Sammy Sosa pops a cork, sits out eight games as a league suspension and gets a role model award from Congress. Elvis Costello marries beautiful jazz diva, Diana Krall; proving that love is truly blind. Scott Peterson's defense team, in the Laci Peterson murder case seems to come up with new theories daily on who actually committed the crime. Anything from a mysterious "Donnie" to a satanic cult driving around Modesto, to a rape victim telling her sexual abuse councilor that her attackers last November muttered something about a murder that would take place on Christmas Day. Not to be outdone, top gun George dub-ya played Tom Cruise for a day, landing aboard an aircraft carrier. And on a recent flight I took to Detroit, a couple in coach were wearing their Michael Jackson SARS masks, proving that once again Michael is a trendsetter. Last but not least, six local guys from New York pool their $75,000 over a few beers and buy a racehorse named Funny Cide. It won both the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness! But, as a gelding, the poor horse can't even get it up anymore. Just plain weird.

Then there's radio, which has taken on its own dysfunctional strange quirks. We've got owners who proudly wear their Century 21 jackets pretending to be broadcasters. They get upset because the new FCC rulings will not allow them to buy more stations. Doesn't Congress realize that resistance is futile? Let's face it Yogi: The future just ain't what it used to be.

All of this ... well, perhaps some of it ... sparked me to speak with respected radio consultant Guy Zapoleon, President of Zapoleon Media Strategies about a paper he has written titled, Radio's Dilemma -- The Solution (Part 2) How do we get out of the current state of the industry and create truly compelling radio once again?

Guy writes:

So, how are we going to save what once was a great industry?

"First, like being an alcoholic, you have to admit there is a problem. While it may start with the jocks and programmers, it has to reach all the way to owners, stockholders and Wall Street.

We need to be like the newscaster from Network and scream from the roof tops "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!" All of us in programming need to keep on screaming until our owners and Wall Street listen or we'll all be working in another industry in five years.

The solutions are easy, but the road back is long and hard ... and starts with eight basic steps:



Admit there is a problem and take a hard look at ourselves.

Build a brain trust to create and execute your strategy.

Get to know your listener and ask them what you can do to be better.

Create custom solutions for listeners.

Make a promise and deliver on it RELENTLESSLY.

Give the consumer better variety and a better product.

Create a unique radio station with great live personalities dedicated to serving ALL the needs of the local community.

Tell the listener about how you listened to them and how you improved, both on the station and most especially with outside marketing ALL THE TIME ? market ... market ... market!!!"



Steve Rivers: This eight step program sounds great. Maybe you add four additional points and turn it into a 12 Step Program where you could make millions! Seriously, it makes total sense to me. We are seeing declining PUR (persons using radio) levels and generally, it seems that listeners are really pissed off that "The Man" has taken over their favorite radio station. While today's radio conditions may drive product specialists like you and I crazy, the financial state of radio isn't that bad. How do we get the attention of Owners and Wall Street with what you've outlined and would it make a difference?

Guy Zapolean: Basically the radio business is very lucky right now. Steve, anyone out there with any real radio experience or someone in the business who has been a fan of radio for 15 years or more can listen to radio and know that 99% of the stations pale in comparison to the great radio of the past. The scary thing is that the evaporation of listening will continue in small doses until everyone has an I-Pod, Satellite radio is in every car and someone like AOL creates a strong indispensable Internet radio brand. Until these options are a part of the American radio consumer's daily life, radio will continue to be viable. When these options do hit, (and they may all hit at around the same time) it will be the same effect that a stand alone Top 40 has in a market place of only a few signals before a 2nd Top 40, Hot AC and Rock station came in. The PUR will take a huge drop. Then someone will write multiple articles in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today about radio being in big trouble, and the owners will wake up. Unfortunately, those of us who see this in the future can write articles and scream about this until we're blue in the face, but no one will do anything until it hits their pocket book.

SR: Do you feel that radio's biggest problem has been the result of The 1996 Telecom Act, which has allowed massive consolidation? When it was explained to me way back in the mid-90s, I remember hearing how it was going to keep Mom and Pop stations from going dark because we'll just buy them! There will be an economy of scale savings by having people like General Managers, Sales Managers, Engineers and Program Directors doing more than one job. What has gone wrong with the plan for world domination?

GZ: There is no doubt that the biggest enemy of good radio has been consolidation. Not because these companies couldn't do good radio, but because the people running them are beholden to Wall Street and the expectation of cash flow were inflated to a ridiculous extreme. When the main motivation is the business instead of the show, you no longer have a healthy environment for creating great radio. When radio companies promised Wall Street its operating results, there was no long term plan to scale the percentage of cash flow once these initial cost savings were in place. Instead of stopping with economies scales of radio stations in the same building and consolidated positions in support departments (i.e. Traffic, Engineering etc.,) they continued to consolidate every position. When you consolidate programming and management you have a loss of time and ability to focus on one radio station and managing the creative individual. Add to that a lack of money which cost radio much of its research resources, marketing money and of course outside experts.

SR: If today's problem is that we've learned how to buy stations and consolidate companies to form bigger ones but are still learning how to operate and manage clusters of multiple stations in a market, do you feel that a lot of the problems are at the local level, or higher up the food chain?

GZ: Its starts at the top which forces the consolidation template, but there are a lot of problems happening at the local level too and that has a lot to do with the amount of time a GM and PD have to devote to one station as well as the people in charge of making station great. When a GM and PD have more than one station to focus on, they lose focus and creativity plus, human nature has them playing favorites inside the cluster. So, creativity and managing people is put on a stop watch killing the internal spirit in any radio station. John Gehron told me a few years ago when he was overseeing Infinity's programming that every radio programmer should have only one station to worry about as his fulltime responsibility. He's right of course ... this would never happen in another competitive business. Take a look at sports for example.

Why doesn't a football player play both offense and defense? Because to be truly great, that player has to focus on learning his skills in one or the other as well as practice all year to be good enough to stay in the league. Why doesn't a coach work with several teams to save money? Because each player on the team needs coaching and the coach needs time to evaluate each player to see who is developing, who is a weak link and make adjustments for the next game. Each week that coach needs to create a unique gameplan for the next game in order to win. Mediocrity is rewarded with the firing of the coach and his team, so there is a lot at stake. Radio no longer has that kind of pressure being put on programming since share losses in Arbitron don't matter as much when a company sells all the stations in a cluster vs. one. Individual stations don't have the same pressure to perform. Who is the big loser? The public, who gets less quality from radio and for the past 5 year's has been actively searching other music and programming choices outside of radio.

SR: I've been saying for the past five years that the biggest enemy of programmers is simply the lack of time to actually to do their jobs. With PDs shuttling back and forth across town to their sister stations and becoming deluged with too many meetings, I know that it makes it harder to give even one station enough personal attention, let alone two or more. What is your advice for today's stressed out programming departments?

GZ: Programmers today have to be the best time managers in radio history. I'd say a Time Power seminar and a Steven Covey management course are the best tools a PD could get these days. Learning to prioritize what's most important vs. what's most urgent are critical for a programmers survival as well as the radio stations they're in charge of. Also, managing upward to the Group PD and Manager is absolutely essential when they need some slack in accomplishing what they see as the priority vs. what their direct superior may have on the agenda for that day. That takes constant communication to keep those people informed of all the important information so they can ease up on meetings, reports and allow that PD to focus on his priorities.

It seems to me that life itself has been pushed into fifth gear. People today want everything now. It's truly the age of "instant gratification." Today's hottest act will become the cut-out queen at the local Wal-Mart in six months and watching the embedded reporters in Gulf War II was like watching the ultimate reality television show. So, with things in our business world spinning faster every day, how do PDs find quicker methods of tapping audience opinions about music and pop culture?

GZ: PDs still have to have the same resources as we did when we programmed Steve. Most of the information any PD needs is available quickly over the internet, but they still are missing the key ingredients ... Time and Experts. Programmers need to find other bright minds to network with, idea people to fill in the gaps of our knowledge. That's what consultants and other experts are for. Now there are certainly bright minds inside the companies, but these same bright minds have the same time constraints on their time as they do, so it's doubtful they are going to be able to make regular calls to pick their brain. Also, getting the information doesn't solve the entire problem because that PD then needs the time it takes to process and create once they have the information they need.

SR: What trends are you seeing in the research you've been privy to this year? Any new formats bubbling under?

GZ: Sure, there are lots of new and "bring back" formats out there, but it will take certain factors to make them viable. For some like AAA, Dance, 70's stations and 80's stations, it will take more share compression inside the Top 10, which will make these new formats capable of succeeding with a 2 share 12 . There are some huge formats that are dormant and capable of being Top 10 players right now like MOR, Traditional Oldies and Oldies AC, but these formats require a shift in the thinking of advertising agencies who need to realize that people over 45 have a lot of money to spend and that age group is greatly underserved by today's radio companies.

SR: Finally, do you feel that Senators like John McCain will be able to force the clock back to pre-1996 with some modified form of consolidation, where stations are held more accountable to the markets they serve? Will he get backstage with Don Henley?

GZ: No, I don't. It reminds me of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington where one good man is trying to do what he was voted into office to do ... Representing the people and to serve the public good. But there is so much greed in our country, that "the good man" is swallowed up and stifled by big business and the elected officials under their influence. Right now, there is such pressure from big business to make a profit at all costs and remove any and all restrictions in ownership and serving the public good, that there is nothing that the good men in our nation's capital like Senator McCain can do. Honestly, I said a major prayer the night before the FCC decision on ownership limits came down. I expected what we all did, that it would be opened to 10 stations. I prayed a major thank you to Him, Monday when it was only 8, and we weren't looking at a complete removal of ownership limits in radio and Television. While radio got somewhat of a reprieve, what happened with the update of the communications act was that one company could own up to 3 TV stations in a market. The act also allows newspaper companies to own other mediums in a marketplace. We all know that's on the horizon and we'll be looking at the few instead of the many in control of America's communication and the opinions that shape our nation. This puts the power in a few hands and if those companies subject to the same lobbying pressures from major groups and businesses that our government is, it creates a threat that a balance of opinion representing all of America's voices will be removed from our nation.

Thanks Guy for your insight. It's always a pleasure to speak with someone who truly still loves the biz after all these years. Maybe you'll get backstage with Henley.